Maria, that was really good advice to write down questions/answers. I'm normally a pretty steady person, but I was so worked up before the meeting with the oncology surgeon yesterday I had to ask my wife Deb to drive us there. The written question list kept me on track and focused.

Well, it was a good news, bad news, good news visit. First of all, the surgeon really impressed us. He is an assistant professor at U of Wisconsin medical school, trained at Harvard (which I understand to be a reasonably good college...), and more than ten years experience treating this kind of stuff. We have a lot of confidence in him.

The bad news is the cancer has spread to multiple lymph nodes. Hence the staging info that I've added to my profile below. The final good news is the surgeon thinks this is very amenable to TORS surgery, on which he is a certified expert. The reading I've done had me hoping for exactly this. So we expect the most likely treatment to be a tonsillectomy via TORS, with a neck resection to get at the lymph nodes, followed by radiation therapy to kill off those pesky stray cells that might be hanging out.

Of course there's more to do here. I have a PET scan scheduled for Monday (Apr 6) afternoon, and a consult with a radiation oncologist on Wednesday morning. The Carbone CCC cancer board meets on Wednesday, so it's conceivable we could have a treatment approach confirmed next week at the start of treatments shortly thereafter.

Mentally, I think I'm doing OK - although getting back to sleep in the middle of the night has been hard. I accepted a prescription for Escitalopram (Lexapro) 10mg against the possibility of depression - can't hurt, right? Daytimes are pretty good for me - the stories I've read here have been a real help.

Thanks again for your kind words of support. I'll check back here often, and post updates as I get them.

Go Wisconsin Badgers against Kentucky tonight in the NCAA semifinals!